Up From Slavery

Clustered in the 500-seat auditorium of Philadelphia's Chamber of Commerce, 150 well-dressed, solemn delegates met one day last week in the 14th annual convention of the tiniest national group in U. S. finance: the National Negro Bankers' Association. Through the day they listened to many a solemn paper on subjects that the august American Bankers Association might have scheduled: profitable use of FHA mortgages, handling of bond accounts, ways of boosting depressed bank earnings.

In 1899, shortly before the late great Booker T. Washington organized the National Negro Business League, there were two Negro banks. When N. N. B. A. was formed in 1926, eleven years after Booker Washington's death, there were 25. Depression I took its toll of Negro banks as of white banks. Today there are twelve active Negro banks and trust companies (with total capital of $1,000,000, assets of $10,000,000) besides 18 savings, loan, and real estate banks.

Delegates at Philadelphia were pleased to hear their officers report progress for 1938, better prospects still for 1939. Last year's clearings for the twelve Negro banks were above $50,000,000--more than the 25 handled in 1926 and some 6% more than for 1937. Member banks, generally working in modest two-and three-window banking rooms, averaged $4,187,000.

Except for Philadelphia's Citizens & Southern Bank & Trust Co. (assets $739,383) all N. N. B. A. banks are in the South. Largest is the Mechanics & Farmers Bank of Durham, N. C. (assets $1,354,000). Oldest is the Citizens Savings Bank & Trust Co. of Nashville (assets $584,000), founded in 1904.

During the course of the meeting N. N. B. A. held its annual election. No one was in doubt how it would turn out. Re-elected for the 14th time was its only president: 85-year-old Major (Spanish-American War paymaster) Richard R. Wright, president of the Citizens & Southern.

Born a slave, liberated in 1865 when his master, a Confederate captain, returned from the war, Richard Wright had his resolute, ambitious mother to thank for his education. She and her free brood tramped 150 miles from Cuthbert to Atlanta, Ga. There he worked his way through Atlanta University (1876) and became first president of Georgia State Industrial College. He spent many a vacation taking short courses at Harvard, University of Chicago. Oxford, topped them off with a night banking course in the University of Pennsylvania--and so, after 30 years of academic work, became a banker.

Today slim, bald, horn-tufted with white wool like an Uncle Tom in business clothes, he has one son who is an African Methodist Episcopal bishop in Capetown, South Africa, another who is a physician, a daughter who is a St. Louis high-school teacher. His third son is a cashier in his father's bank, and another of his five daughters is a teller.

Last week, after the N. N. B. A. convention adjourned, Major Wright went to the White Rock Baptist Church in West Philadelphia, but not to pray. There, in place of the traditional banquet, the delegates joined him for an old-fashioned ice cream social.

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